


Comfort, the Finale

by galfridian



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-04
Updated: 2009-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/pseuds/galfridian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The madness slips in like a burglar in the deep of night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort, the Finale

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a fiction challenge at [](http://whedonland.livejournal.com/profile)[**whedonland**](http://whedonland.livejournal.com/). 

The madness slips in like a burglar in the deep of night. Topher's mind begins to decay before he realizes there's a danger. He finds himself sometimes, stuck on words and phrases, or at night, dreaming about the fabrications he builds till they turn to nightmares of gore and terror.

He sees Saunders—Claire, Whiskey—soften, turn bright-eyed toward Boyd. This haunts him too.

Ms. DeWitt notices first. Her mind has never been dull, but she has sharpened her senses and built higher her defenses since Alpha and Mr. Dominic.

Ms. Dewitt—no, Adelle, she must be Adelle now—knows. She cares for him, reminds him in quiet, discreet ways of reality, watches him as she always has. He once considered it sisterly, her treatment of him. But the darkness has begun to build outside too, and things can no longer have finite, crisp definitions.

Just as life—as existence itself—swiftly changes on the outside, so do they. They fall through a series of relationships and boundaries, employer and employee, enemies, equals, friends, until he can no longer distinguish one from the others.

All the while, the fissures form in his psyche. He loses and loses. Sometimes he forgets himself—no, not some scatterbrained thing like leaving the oven on, but truly forgetting who he is. Sometimes he confuses Topher Brink with fictions.

The lights dim throughout the Dollhouse for the night. Together, they look out over the quiet and the calm. He has enough sense left to know his time is short, days or moments or hours or weeks. Not enough.

So he reaches out for the one thing he and Adelle have not been. He pulls her to him, dips her head toward his, and Adelle—clever, clever Adelle—understands.

Kissing Adelle is—

Kissing Adelle cannot be articulated, not truly. There is a rigor to her kisses that is reminiscent of the way she runs her Dollhouse, but a softness is there too. It's the gentleness she offers him, the quiet Adelle who waits patiently for the soldier Adelle to let her have her say. There's a sweetness to kissing Adelle, and that both does and doesn't surprise Topher.

As they step closer to one another, leaning into the contact both have been so deprived of, his heart recalls its longing for Claire and he thinks he can feel hers remembering Laurence, but it fades. Heat builds between them, a fine, encompassing thing that reaches his aching bones, lights a fire in his mind. Adelle's tongue slips into his mouth as his finds its way to hers, and he marvels at how clear his mind is now. Thoughts drift through in pristine condition, connected to one another, and solid. He can't recall the last moment he felt both alive and at home in his own head.

The first kiss becomes many more, until they're tumbling into his office and drawing the shades, and grasping and clinging and...

Topher is certain that something remarkable transpired then.

Beyond the guilt that sears his soul each day, that is the only thing about which he is certain. He cannot recall what happened as the shutters closed and darkness enveloped his office, but he can still recall the feel of his mouth against hers, and the pounding of his heart as he and she embraced their last remaining comfort.


End file.
